The story gets told, chapter by chapter, from alternating perspectives. The self-absorption of individual family members.Yet in their frequent returning to religion and being present with the “feeling” of God, faith for the couple at the center of the book somehow comes off as a source of continual redemption - a true north for goodness. The pastors’ struggle to uphold basic religious precepts introduces persistent hypocrisy throughout the story. “Crossroads” is the name of the Christian youth group around which the plot is anchored. (Here are my reviews of Purity and Freedom, both of which I enjoyed tremendously, and my quotes from his non-fiction essay collection How to Be Alone.) Crossroads is a tour de force: utterly vivid characters, dynamic plot development, gorgeous – seemingly effortless – prose styling.Īs he tracks one set of family dynamics, various themes or sub-themes run through the plot: Crossroads, Franzen’s latest, is as absorbing on that topic as in any of his previous work that I’ve read. What is the hole Franzen fills when he publishes a new novel?Īmong other things, our desire for piercing insight into all matters of the American family. There’s a Franzen-sized hole in our reading lives that gets filled about once every eight years - that’s how Dwight Garner put it about Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel Crossroads.
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